The Fire Between
by Systemic Anomaly
Summary: The people we grow to love often understand us far better than the people that raised us and honor is a matter of choice. He thinks he's a disappointment. She knows better.


**Title:** "The Fire Between"  
**Word Count:** 1281. oO  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** The people we grow to love often understand us far better than the people that raised us; and honor is a matter of choice.  
**Author's Notes:** Well. sighs. I'd _intended_ to write a slightly-belated Father's Day-inspired story about Greg House's relationship with his father. However, it turned into something else entirely once I got there, and so... I'm not so sure about this one, so feel free to let me know. Maybe I'm just Cuddy-obsessed today, or skirting around the difficult issues.

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"The last time my dad ever hit me," Greg House was murmuring in the sweaty and sweltering dark, "I was sixteen. And still too stupid not to care."

They'd just finished making love, overhot and desperate with need in a way that terrified and exulted them both, and Cuddy lay on her side, half-facing him with his good leg resting carelessly over her hip. The sheets lay in a puddled mess around and under them, and she was sweaty and sticky and _hot,_ but House never talked about himself in this way, never talked about his parents at _all,_ and so she stopped and stilled and watched him, unable to truly comprehend. "He _hit_ you?"

And House laughed, shifting his hips with a little grunt, already drifting toward sleep. "Does that really surprise you so much, considering the vaunted numbers who've done it since I've worked for you?" A derisive snort: _Idiots._ But he shrugged a little. 

"There was this girl--" And Cuddy couldn't help but laugh, of _course_ it would have been that, and he curled his lip into half a smile at her amusement. But his eyes were still cool, detached. Dangerous. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I took his car out. Thing about living on a military base is that it's cool to know seventeen ways out of it... but you have to go through a checkpoint to get back _in."_

He paused, remembering, and shrugged. "I was taller by then, and after a day and a half of sleeping on my stomach because my ass was sore I just decided he wasn't gonna touch me again." Laughing softly. "He wasn't an abuser, no Afterschool special, he just had his lines and his rules and his regs, just like everything else."

A moment. 

"I got so _sick_ of his bullshit, after a while. He was just so _perfect,_ never lied, wouldn't deal with anybody who did, and he'd be _damned_ if his only son would grow up to be a delinquent. You do what you're told, you do what's _right,_ damnit, and you never waver from the straight and narrow because a real man lives up to his moral obligations."

Another bitter laugh. "He called it a matter of honor. And I don't think that I ever really quit disappointing him, after that. Because my definition of honor tends to _differ_ just a little."

And she could see it, see _him:_ a lanky teenager in an oversized jersey, maybe, maybe those same blue jeans that had remained such a perfect enduring snapshot of him. Hair maybe just a little too long for a Marine pilot's kid, those gunsight blue eyes filled then with some unformed rebellion, some desire to _be_ what he _was,_ to follow his own path and everyone else be damned if they didn't know enough to get out of the way.

_Some things never change,_ she thought, reaching out a small warm hand to stroke his bare thigh, but somewhere deep inside the last piece fell into sequence and she knew, really _knew_ him. In a way that Cuddy doubted anyone else ever did, or dared to try. The flush of pleasure -- pride -- through her chest at that realization made her feel light-headed, and a beat later, shameful.

She had a moment to mourn for that kid, as ridiculous as _that_ was: to fully understand some of the changes that had been made in the fire between, to temper the clay of the arrogant but desperately genius child into the hardness of this damaged, bitter man that did everything according to his own damn rules and had simply dismissed the world as a bad job, after how it had so casually chewed him up and spit him out.

No more lacrosse, no more being hoisted onto the shoulders of his teammates, no more lazy summer runs or taking the stairs two at a time -- or at all -- and while everyone _had_ to grow up eventually, House had been faced with the ultimate loss of his innocence when Stacy's pen had scratched empty across the four A.M. form and he'd lost his freedom for good.

"Sometimes..." And his voice was heavier, now, on the edge of sleep and Cuddy shifted against him, knowing that these rare moments of revelation were few and far between, even while she also knew that he probably wouldn't remember a word of it in the morning.

"Sometimes I wonder what he was hiding," and a short bitter laugh like an afterthought. "Because _everybody_ fucking lies. No one gets out of it. _No one's_ an exception."

His eyes, dark and half-lidded, watching her with some tired wry amusement and yet: the coals of an old anger, the same cynical worldview that he'd seen confirmed in his way, over and over again. Sometimes Cuddy wanted to grab him and _shake_ him, wanted to shout in his face that the world might be nasty, it might bite you in the ass and _sure_ the fucker had teeth, she'd felt them herself more than once, but there was beauty and passion there, too, love, and that you had to be willing at least to give it a _chance_ before you just went and gave up.

Like she'd given this -- given him -- that chance.

The chance to try for something more, while there was still enough light left to see before the inexorable dark.

"Maybe he wasn't hiding anything," she heard herself reply softly, stroking his leg and slipping her other hand beneath the spill of her hair, shaking it out behind her back so that she could lie beside him, propped on a single elbow that was like alabaster in the thin pale moonlight from her window. "Maybe you're more like him than you think... and maybe that's not a bad thing."

A soft, dismissive snort.

And Cuddy lifted a shoulder. "Maybe he saw the way the world really was... being a Marine in the sixties and seventies didn't show you the world's _best,_ or so I've heard." _Understatement of the year, right there._ "Maybe he saw... what was it... 'the giant, gaping chasm in between' the world as it is and the world as it could be."

She smiled, just a little, his listening, breathing silence speaking more than volumes of words. "And maybe he was trying to change that with you. Yeah, yeah, crappy way of trying... but maybe he wanted you to see that you could be _above_ that rule of 'everybody lies'... if you wanted to be."

The soft flutter of his lashes.

"Honor is doing what you can," Cuddy murmured firmly to him, brushing back his sweaty hair and speaking half to herself by this point. "Honor is taking what you _are_ and _being_ that thing, it's about staying true to what you are. And you, Greg? You've pretty much defined that law by existing."

His eyes were closed, his breathing even, the sheet half-sprawled over his hips; and she took a moment to draw it up across his chest before settling beside him: wide awake, now, and gentle. "He should be proud of you," she murmured against his ear. "You're the best there is, and anyone who's too busy getting distracted by your flash is a goddamn fool."

Silence, and breathing, and dark; and Cuddy closed her eyes.

_For what it's worth._


End file.
